Manufacturing synthetic Hagfish slime skeins using embedded 3D printing

The goal of the research is to synthetically manufacture tough super absorbent material mimicking defensive slime produced by hagfish. Hagfish produce a defensive slime to protect themselves from predators. An integral mechanical feature of the slime is the thread skein that unravels under the hydrodynamic forces of seawater to provide support to the slime. The scope of this paper is to manufacture skeins 10 times larger than natural skeins. The performance of the skein is determined expansion ratio which is the total coiled thread length divided by the largest dimension of the coiled skein. The goal is to fabricate skeins with the largest dimension smaller than 1.5 mm and total length of 1500 mm to have an expansion ratio of 1:1000. Through the course of this project, the natural skein was studied and parameterized to design synthetic skeins that could be manufactured using embedded 3D printing. The designed skein was inspired by the natural skein and then optimized to maximize the expansion ratio while maintaining manufacturability. A custom high-precision 3D printer was designed and built to manufacture the designed skeins using a novel embedded 3D printing technique that uses solvent exchange. This technique allowed us to print fibers of diameters 2-5 μm which is around 10 times smaller than diameters previously achieved by embedded 3D printing. The printing variable and conditions were optimized using quantitative experiments and analysis to achieve the highest resolution possible with our custom 3D printer setup. The designed skeins were 3D printed using the high precision 3D printer and qualitatively analyzed.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Mechanical Engineering

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Parasramka, Vidush

Contributors dc:contributor

• Tawfick, Sameh

• Hagfish
• Slime
• Skein
• Embedded 3d Printing
• Additive Manufacturing
• Solvent Exchange

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Vidush Parasramka

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/120467

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F120467